[Theme: Twenty Twelve] nav bar fails in IE8

if twentytwelve were a premium theme sold in some marketplace, I could understand them not fixing this for IE8, but this is the new default theme for wordpress, which should work in most of the browsers in use today. and I would think IE8 is still fairly common, especially if you do not have windows 7+ (which I don’t have).

Al

It’s an intentional design decision, older versions of IE don’t support modern CSS and media queries very well. We looked at a lot of angles and solutions and nothing worked perfectly, see more discussion at https://core.trac.www.ads-software.com/ticket/21440.

The large number of people on IE8 is frustrating, but is it really a deliberate decision for the main navigation menus to fail badly for more than 1 in 10 users?

I don’t remotely expect all the features of a modern theme to be supported in old IE, but I would expect the basic navigation system to work. Are there really no plans at all to make the main navigation menu of the default theme fail gracefully in unsupported browsers?

Given the number of people I encounter every month still running XP and IE8, it’s unfortunate. It’s more unfortunate that so many people still run that garbage. This is definitely fixable, as I’ve already seen a child theme that fixed it. But, at some point the web needs to move forward and this helps.

You can implement your own browser compatible menu using the walker on wp_nav_menu.

As the theme is free, beggars can’t be choosers.

If this were just any random free theme in the repository, I wouldn’t care.

Since this is the new default theme, which will be pushed out to all new installs of WordPress in a few months, and it will serve as the primary model for future theme development… call me choosy.

@zota, the primary model for future theme dev should be to stop supporting IE8, which was released 3.5 years ago in March 2009. More importantly it is a horrible browser. I’d love to see them add a notice linking to browsehappy.com for browsers older than IE8 and below.
<!--[if lt IE 8]><p class="chromeframe">Your browser is <em>ancient!</em> <a href="https://browsehappy.com/">Upgrade to a different browser</a> to experience this site.</p><![endif]-->

Should we force people to take actions on their own that will make our sites look nicer; or should we build sites for the lowest common denominator?

Large numbers of people have no idea how to upgrade their browser, or they don’t even know what a browser is. They turn on their computers and just want to look at a website. We have to keep this group in mind when we create sites.

Let me clarify — I don’t think IE 8 and below should be supported, and users should be encouraged/forced to upgrade. But any well-made theme should fail gracefully in unsupported browsers.

Users stuck in an old browser for whatever reason should still be able to navigate a site. On a site with more than a handful of pages, this theme makes the site unnavigable for a major percentage of people.

If I remember correctly, WordPress.com has a page somewhere that shows links to all current, popular browser options. Here’s my own:

Current Browsers

I’ve never understood why so many people stick with Internet Explorer anyway….maybe I’m arrogant.

Most people don’t choose to stick with IE 8.

There are a lot of institutions that restrict browser upgrades, while supporting internal software optimized with crappy Microsoft features. There are a lot of technophobic people who just buy a computer and click on the icon that gives them web. It sucks. It’s stupid. But browser upgrade buttons aren’t going to fix this.

Again, let me clarify. I don’t want or expect full support for IE 8. And I really don’t want any of my users to be on IE 8. But sadly, there are a lot of them.

If the main nav menu is broken for a large number of people, then for the foreseeable future, we just can’t use the new default theme.

If the main nav menu is broken for a large number of people, then for the foreseeable future, we just can’t use the new default theme.

Instead of choosing not to use Twenty Twelve, could you fix the navigation to work in IE 8 or any browser you want that isn’t supported?

I really like this theme, so I hope a fix is possible…

But the theme builders are far more skilled that I’ll ever be. If they’ve officially given up on implementing a functional menu for IE 8, I can’t say I feel very optimistic about getting to use this theme.

Oh well. Maybe this is the year all the Windows XP computers finally die all at once.
(please oh please oh please)

Well, I just discovered the IE 8 surprise. As much as everyone wishes that IE 8 and Windows XP would drop off the planet, it hasn’t happened yet. People from all walks of life are still running Windows XP and are unable to upgrade IE beyond 8, it is a shame that this theme doesn’t offer a standard menu experience for them. A designer would have to think twice before using this theme for a business site. Potential clients/buyers that are running XP would be offended or just plain baffled by the menu and move on to another easier to navigate site.

IE8 is far from dead, on the web site I maintain, over 50% of the IE users use IE8 (IE9 41%), so this is not a trivial problem as far as I am concerned. I like the new theme BUT cannot use it on my web site unless the IE8 menu situation is fixable.

Al